Winner Stays On
An exclusive extract from RM Clark’s new book, following the trail of last season’s FA Cup from start to finish
Tuesday 19 December 2023
NEXT HOME GAME: Notts County – Friday 22 December, 7.45pm
NEXT AWAY GAME: Barrow – Tuesday 26 December, 3pm
Dear County fans, Stopfordians, and anyone else joining us today, a very warm welcome to your Tuesday edition of The Scarf My Father Wore.
Today’s edition is all about the magic of the FA Cup, but before we get into that, we’re concentrating on the magic of Ian Brown, the latest County fan to sign up as a paid subscriber! We’re very fortunate to have him as part of our preview team each week, and my sincere thanks to Ian for supporting the website even further. Here’s a quick chat with Ian on why he upgraded. If you also think The Scarf My Father Wore is worth 17p a day (or just 13p if you sign up for the year!) please give that button a click. I need extra cash for my Terry’s Chocolate Orange addiction at this time of year.
Why did you decide to become a paid subscriber?
I wanted to support this most worthy of online publications and in this sad old 21st century world cash is what is the big driver – without it small voices struggle to be heard and ultimately die. My subscription hopefully goes some small way towards helping keep The Scarf My Father Wore doing what it does!
Favourite thing about The Scarf My Father Wore?
It’s a close-run thing twixt the articles of two splendidly erudite contributors: John K Bilsbury and Jonathan Baker (aka Geordie Hatter).
Why should other County fans become paid subscribers too?
It’s always sad to look back and think, “If only I had…” The Scarf My Father Wore looks in splendid health just now. Becoming a paid subscriber helps keep it that way.
OK, plug over. FA Cup time. Even though County slipped on a non-league banana skin just six days ago, I absolutely adore the FA Cup. It’s still a magical competition in my eyes. In fact, I’m currently writing a big feature on County’s trip to Goodison Park in January 1996, which I’m really looking forward to sharing with you next week as my little Christmas gift to readers! (I’ve actually just got off the phone with someone who played at Everton that day…)
Last season, on Saturday 26 November 2022, County travelled to Charlton Athletic in the competition. For us, it was chapter two of that campaign’s FA Cup adventure. A last-gasp Myles Hippolyte equaliser forced a replay, which we won, but our road to Wembley ended in chapter three with Walsall winning at Edgeley Park.
The day after County’s game at The Valley, RM Clark was at the Pirelli Stadium watching Burton Albion take on Chippenham Town. That was also a second round proper fixture, but for RM Clark, this was already chapter eight of his personal FA Cup odyssey, having followed the competition all the way from the extra preliminary round back in August.
As with the previous rounds, the author continued to follow whichever team progressed, ending up at Wembley in June to see Manchester Citeh lift the trophy after beating United 2-1. Fourteen rounds in total, producing fourteen chapters of an excellent new book capturing the heart and soul of the competition from the first kick to the last. With original research and rich, thought-provoking prose, the book blends elements of travel writing with football culture and barstool sociology. It's also funny.
Today’s edition is sponsored by Colourtone. As always, a big thank you to Paul.
Finally, I’m currently walking every street in Stockport to raise money for mental health charity Mentell. If you’d like to make a donation to help me reach my target, please click here.
Total distance so far: 46.68 miles
Total steps so far: 83,302
Total raised so far: £1,027
Total completed streets so far: 24 (Click here for the full list, which includes reports and photos from every day of the walk.)
Further information on the walk can be found by clicking here.
Des Junior
Burton Albion began by bouncing around the lower divisions for more than fifty years, with the town’s midlands geography making them a convenient pawn in the perpetual restructuring of regional football: The Subbuteo Saturday Midlands League gave way to the North-West Eastern Premier; the North-West Eastern Premier funnelled down to the John Deere South. Reading about it now, I have found this period of their history to be almost impenetrable in its complexity. They would finish runners-up and get promoted; finish dead last and be given a reprieve. Thankfully, the FA Cup has always remained loyal to its format. And so, the historical trajectory of the football club is perhaps encapsulated best by recounting its initial appearances in the Third Round.
Their first cup run of any note came in the 1955/56 season, when they beat five of their non-league peers before meeting Halifax Town in the Second Round. There, they drew nil-nil, and forced a replay at home in four days time, where they were victorious. The goalkeeper, who was also landlord at the nearby Smith’s Arms, kept a clean sheet despite suffering from a shoulder injury so painful that he couldn’t even pull a pint the next day. The team adopted a special diet of sherry, eggs and milk before losing 7-0 to Charlton Athletic.
They wouldn’t reach the Third Round again for another 29 years. Neil Warnock was in charge by then, working as a part-time podiatrist alongside his first ever post in management. The opponents were Leicester City and it was the undisputed tie of the round, pitting Division One glamour against the grit of the Northern Premier League. Burton’s Eton Park was deemed unfit for such an occasion; and it was seen as a safer move to stage the match at the home of their fiercest rivals, Derby County.
Un-ticketed.
In the middle of the 1980s.
(I know)
Burton’s goalkeeper that day was a man called Paul Evans. The first thing he noticed thrown from the crowd was a can. It landed in his goalmouth. He picked it up and found that it was full of sand. Coins followed. And then, something else: a wooden block, torn out from the seating below. It hit Evans and Evans hit the deck. He was left nauseous, vomiting on the pitch, and conceded two goals that to this day he still can’t remember. Leicester scored six in total, including a hat-trick from a young and shameless striker by the name of Gary Lineker.
Enraged by the hostile crowd, Burton Albion lodged an official appeal with the FA, and the match was arranged to be replayed behind closed doors. Lineker’s goals were struck from the record. Burton lost by just a single goal in the replay. But for Evans, who was a humble solicitor by trade, the damage had already been done:
“We went to the game to enjoy ourselves,” he said at the time, “but I was deprived of half an hour of a game I had been looking forward to.”
Those matches will forever be the first two times that Burton Albion reached the Third Round of the FA Cup. But with a little imagination, it is perhaps also possible to envisage them as so much more. You see, the Third Round is as Christmas number ones are to the history of modern pop: a shorthand, a way to take a single event, a single record, and to extrapolate it across the rest of the year. Against Charlton, for example, there was the post-war, pre-science naivety of sherry and milk and eggs. Against Leiecester there was hooliganism. And in 2006, for Albion’s first Third Round appearance during the Premier League era, there were the big bucks. When Manchester United came to town.
“Burton Albion hadn’t got a press officer at that point. We were a non-league team, we didn’t really need one. So we’ve got this game against the biggest club in the world and we’ve got to arrange a press conference. The chairman gives me a ring and says:
“Dave, I’ve got to do a press conference”.
I said “Yeah, why are you telling me, Ben?”.
“Well they’ve asked me who the press officer is and I’ve given your name.”
I said “You’ve what? I’m not the press officer.”
“Well, you are now.”
I was given a club tie two hours before the press conference, and that was it. I stood up and it was live on Sky Sports. The shock for me was the flashing of cameras, you know, the clicker-cameras and the flash bulbs, it was quite disorientating really. I was thinking “blimey”. Then John Sadler stood up, who wrote for The Sun, and he started asking a question and I just thought “bloody hell, I read your column”.”
- Dave Child, Supporter.
“Yeah, well, the thing about that was that we moved into the Pirelli Stadium in the summer of 2005 and we had a bit of a problem with the pitch. I was presented with an overspend. A project manager came to me and said “I’m sorry, we’ve got a problem here”. And I had made it very clear from the start of the project that we weren’t in the market for a white elephant, and we had what we had to spend and that was the end of it. Anyway, it was a few hundred thousand pounds.”
- Ben Robinson, Chairman.
“We had a problem with the pitch - you’ll find some old pictures, I’m sure. There wasn’t a pitch at all at the time of the press conference. They were asking, you know, “what about the pitch?” and I can’t think how I actually got out of it in the end, I think I said something like “erm, no questions on the pitch please ladies and gentlemen. There will be one there on Saturday and it will be perfectly suitable for both teams.” I was, I suppose, what they call ‘winging it’ - because I hadn’t got a bloody clue what they were gonna do before Saturday.”
- Dave Child, Supporter.
“The irony of that is that Manchester United had been to Burton about two months earlier to officially open the Pirelli Stadium. I can remember standing on the pitch and doing a welcome to Manchester United, and I actually said “well wouldn’t it be great if they could come back in the FA Cup in a few months time”. And at that stage Burton still had to win a First Round replay against Peterborough, so we were by no means guaranteed to be in the Third Round. We got through the replay against Peterborough, then we beat Burscough in the Second Round and then we drew Manchester United. Sir Alex Ferguson remembered what I’d said and he put it in his programme notes! He actually wrote some programme notes for the game against Burton and mentioned - “oh yeah, your PA guy spoke about this when we opened the stadium, and now here we are for the game itself”.”
- Ian Hawkins, Matchday Announcer.
“We did play on Saturday in the cup. We drew 0-0. Wayne Rooney played, Cristiano Ronaldo played, a whole host of well known people played - but we got a draw. So, obviously we went for a replay at Old Trafford, and that made us quite a lot of money. So much so that the chairman was able to pay off the debt that we’d incurred when we were building the new stadium, and it probably kept us running for the next 3 or 4 years.”
- Dave Child, Supporter.
“It’s interesting, the live TV games that are on this Saturday, I think the TV fee is £80,000. In January 2006 we got £150,000 for each of the two games against Manchester United. That and then the gate receipts… that’s why every team wants to draw Manchester United away; those two games paid off the debt on the stadium, which was a massive financial help, and on the back of that it gave us a new platform with some great exposure. I remember the leader of the Council had been away visiting relatives in New Zealand. He came to see me when he returned and he’d bought me a newspaper, and on the back page, with a big picture, was Burton Albion Vs Manchester United. It put Burton Albion on the map, not just in the town or the county, but all around the world.”
- Ben Robinson, Chairman.
Give your car a lick of paint
Granted, Stockport used to be a little rough around the edges. But the town’s getting a good old lick of paint these days, with fancy new offices, apartments, bars and restaurants springing up. You can’t be driving up and down the A6 in a tatty car with chipped paintwork, so give your car a nice lick of paint too. Colourtone is your go-to company for that. They’ve been servicing the automotive and industrial markets in Cheshire and Greater Manchester for decades, and carry an extensive range of car paint and industrial paints.
Visit colourtone.com for further details.
Bits and bobs
🚗 Tanto drives a very flash Lamborghini.
💰 Nick Powell is currently studying to become a financial adviser.
👨👩👧👦 County currently have more full-time staff than two Premier League clubs.
🏟 Everton have confirmed they’re not moving to their new stadium until the start of the 2025-26 season. Fingers crossed for one last visit to Goodison Park next season in the FA Cup or League Cup.
❓ The Scarf Bergara Wore are hosting their annual Christmas quiz at Stockport Gin tomorrow night. Drop Russ or Nick a message if you fancy going along to watch.
✍️ Paul Mullin’s book is actually a really decent read. Here’s a snippet:
My favourite goal for Wrexham was the chip against Stockport at home that took us to Wembley for the FA Trophy final. I’d had a similar opportunity on the right side of the pitch on my stronger right foot but had run in on the goalkeeper and missed. I was still beating myself up for not chipping him when a carbon copy of that chance came on my left foot. This time I did chip him. And it worked. That goal meant everything. I’d been to Wembley with Tranmere but not got on the pitch, so to get there with Wrexham, and to score the goal to make it happen – a great goal which I’d worked out for myself – was an unbelievable moment.
The final itself, however, was a bit of a damp squib. We lost 1-0 to Bromley, and there’s a photo of me punching the pitch in frustration at the end. Some might wonder why – “Hang on, it’s only the FA Trophy!” – but that game really mattered to me. As a footballer you don’t get many chances to play at Wembley. Most players never get near the place. What you see in that picture is someone who doesn’t know if they’ll ever play at Wembley again – get the chance to walk up those famous steps as a winner.
In the end, we probably paid the price for a bit of end-of-season fatigue. We didn’t have a big squad at the time, created very little, they scored out of nowhere, and that was that. That one big chance we needed just didn’t materialise. I also think that in the back of our minds we knew we had a much bigger game – the play-off semi-final against Grimsby Town – the week after. Look at it like that, and the FA Trophy final was something we didn’t really need. But while I was angry in the moment, I wasn’t going to mope afterwards. I got on a coach back up north with family and friends and had a party all the way home. OK, we lost, but result aside I had actually played at Wembley – and that was definitely something to celebrate. And so I spent the majority of that four-hour trip jumping up and down belting out “Sweet Caroline” and Jamie Webster songs.
John, the team bus driver from Tranmere, a great bloke who’d kept in touch when I moved on, was at the wheel. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Look at this dickhead,” he pointed out. “We’ve driven four hours to watch him play, he’s gone and let us down, and now look at him.”
I was like, “You just drive the bus, lad, and shut up!”
Photo of the day
Runaway Bay, Jamaica
County’s media executive Liam Richardson enjoying a mid-season break in Jamaica, with a glass of something bright red. Looks refreshing, but it’s no Christmas dinner in a cup…
Today in SK
🍺 Food and drink
The Nelson Tavern (SK1) have a great range of offers throughout the week, including £4.50 for drinks off the Doubles Bar, a comprehensive range of shots for £2, and 3 for £6 on Jägerbombs.
Lite bite meal deal at The Friary (SK3). Cod or haddock, served with chips, and a side of peas, curry or gravy. Plus tea or coffee. £9.95. Open till 7.30pm.
Tapas Tuesday at TRUNK (SK7) from 5pm. All tapas dishes are 3-for-2 (cheapest dish free). Call 0161 222 9260 to book a table, and mention “The Scarf My Father Wore” to receive a 15% discount off the normal tapas menu.
🎱 Free pool
The George & Dragon (SK7). 6pm - 9pm.
The Scarf My Father Wore works closely with venues on a daily basis to bring you the most comprehensive guide to all of the best offers and events taking place across the whole SK region. Click on the links below for full details of everything taking place in your area over the next few weeks.
SK1 / SK2 / SK3 / SK4 / SK5 / SK6 / SK7 / SK8 / SK9 / SK10 / SK11 / SK12 / SK13 / SK14 / SK15 / SK16 / SK17 / SK22 / SK23
DJ Des
How do you like your eggs in the morning? Dean Martin liked his with a kiss. I like mine nowhere near a County coach going to Gillingham away.
After County’s rearranged game at Priestfield was announced yesterday, I was absolutely horrified to see certain supporters condoning the consumption of egg butties heading down the motorway. As you can see, I completely disagree. Under no circumstances should those things be acceptable.
Would you like DJ Des to play a particular song for you? Email thescarfmyfatherwore@substack.com with your requests/shoutouts!
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